Come From Away, Medusa

We got to see a bit of the Assyrian exhibit at
no extra charge

We came for "Dangerous Beauty: Medusa in Classical Art," but we got to see a bit of the Assyrian exhibit at no extra charge!  (OK, there's technically no charge, since I'm a member, but whatevs.)

The Medusa exhibit was just one small room -- not too overwhelming, even for those without much patience for museum trips.

I don't remember seeing Medusa with snakes neatly tied under her neck before, but honestly that didn't really faze me.

No, the truly big revelation was that Medusa had wings.  On her head.

But I suppose it makes sense, if a winged horse is to emerge from her body on decapitation...

Pegasus emerges from the decapitated (but winged) Medusa

Now THAT'S a scary Gorgon head on his shield!

In the same room, they had some other female monsters, such as the siren shown here to the right.  She's still mostly bird at this phase – apparently these monsters started out mostly as animals but became more and more human (and beautiful) over time.

But right after I took this photo (right), I started noticing something very interesting just outside the room, on the window sill.  I spent a while trying to capture it....

Life imitating Art

We went back downstairs to find Perseus holding the Gorgon's head and wandered around the statuary for a bit.

Gaping Maw of the Sea Monster

It does not seem to be Andromeda's lucky day

Nice shoes, Perseus!

The statue of Perseus holding Medusa's head was nice enough, but B pointed out that Athena's help doesn't seem to have prevented Perseus from turning to stone.

Also, even though he's wearing the winged cap, he is Clearly Visible.

Poor guy.  Rookie mistakes.

dreaming of stilettos

F is for François Ier

So after the museum, we went over to E.A.T.  I'd meant to navigate to a different diner, the Lexington Candy Bar, but I mislabeled the address at home, and didn't think about the fact that the LEXINGTON diner was not likely to be on MADISON AVE.  Oh well.  It was fine except for the crying babies and the fact that they took a long time to seat and serve us.  So we rushed through the meal and grabbed an uber across town to the theater.  That worked so smoothly we even got there a little early.   We didn't fancy the line at Starbucks or Junior's, so we went to the Junior's To Go door, which was perfect.  We got back to the theatre lobby at 1:45 pm...  And it was still strangely uncrowded.  And suddenly we realized... it was a 3 pm show, not a 2 pm.  OOPS.

As for "Come From Away" – it was wonderful.   I thought it would not touch me too deeply, since it's set entirely in Newfoundland, and it portrays events that took place 15+ years ago.  Cue 100 minutes of deep belly laughs interspersed with crying. Excellent music. And acting. Wonderful characters and story threads. The girls loved it, but were not affected as my brother and I were; they weren't even alive at the time.  I noticed C looking over in my direction several times during the show, so I tried to control my crying somewhat.  She reported afterward that her dad cried almost the entire show.

I probably would not have attended had I realized it would have no intermission, but I'm glad I did.